Chapter Summaries

Wenren Sheng entered a parallel-world version of the Three Kingdoms era, where the Shu Kingdom watched Wei and Wu fight while profiting from their conflict. He joined the Four Seas Trading Company as a crewman and sailed on a freighter carrying supplies to Wu, discovering the shipment was a secret arrangement.

• Wenren Sheng arrived in Hucheng in July 1943 and learned that Wei was attacking a fortified Wu island.
• At Hengyuan Teahouse, Wenren Sheng heard locals debate the war, Shu’s interests, and its reliance on the Commander and foreign technology.
• Wenren Sheng responded to Four Seas Trading Company’s recruitment notice, used the name Wen Sheng, and secured a registered identity and a crew position.
• Wenren Sheng boarded a Shu-flagged freighter carrying canned food and quickly learned to operate its cargo machinery.
• Wenren Sheng overheard the crew discussing how the shipment was bound for Wu and how Shu benefited from Wu holding out against Wei.

Wenren Sheng investigated a Shu Kingdom supply ship after mysterious fog appeared around the world and discovered that a Wei Kingdom submarine was shadowing it. The submarine’s crew debated attacking the ship but followed orders to avoid provoking a full alliance between Shu and Wu.

• Wenren Sheng saw the fog prompt and recognized that an unknown power was enclosing the world.
• He studied the Shu Kingdom’s support for Wu Kingdom and calculated that the ship carried enough supplies for tens of thousands of people.
• Wenren Sheng spotted a Wei Kingdom periscope following the supply ship and used a cheat to listen to the submarine crew.
• The crew argued over sinking the ship, then decided to keep monitoring it because orders forbade attacks on Shu Kingdom steamships.
• The submarine surfaced and continued following the slow-moving ship, allowing the ship’s crew to notice it.

Wenren Sheng traveled to an island where the Wei Kingdom and Wu Kingdom were locked in a costly battle and found the Ignorance Demon manipulating both sides. After discovering it was steering the Wei Kingdom toward developing antimatter weapons, he seized and refined it away.

• A Wei Kingdom submarine forced Captain and First Mate to abandon their planned route, so they delivered their cargo at a northern Shu Kingdom port instead.
• Wenren Sheng watched the ship unload and learned that delivering directly to the island would have earned its crew ten times as much.
• Wenren Sheng swam to an island where Wei Kingdom forces bombarded Wu Kingdom tunnel defenses and considered how Wei could use its command of the sea and air to avoid costly landings.
• Wenren Sheng recognized the Ignorance Demon as the force making the Wei Kingdom persist in fighting for islands and pushing it toward developing antimatter weapons.
• Wenren Sheng grabbed the Ignorance Demon and refined it away.

Wenren Sheng entered a demon-invaded detective world where every detective had a cheat and hired a detective agency to investigate their methods. The agency chose a case involving three wealthy men found dead in a villa, and Wenren Sheng prepared to use it to draw famous detectives together.

• Wenren Sheng left the mist-covered world and traveled to a stable case-solving world to investigate its peculiarities without using his own cheat.
• Wenren Sheng hired the World's Number One Detective Agency for nine gold bars to learn how famous detectives solved cases.
• The middle-aged detective admitted that his dog and cat found clues for him, while his daughter worried he would fail to complete the commission.
• The detective team set out to visit famous detectives, but they found that the detectives guarded their methods and newspaper reports could be unreliable.
• The middle-aged detective proposed gathering famous detectives to examine a famous case, and Wenren Sheng agreed to fund a reward.
• The team selected a case in which three nouveau riche men had died in a villa.

Wenren Sheng and a group of famous detectives investigated the Three Tycoons Locked-Room Suicide Case after a competition was announced with a one-ton gold reward. At the first crime scene, Wenren Sheng saw how the killer had hidden the victim’s body before the library was locked, though the other two deaths remained to be investigated.

• The middle-aged man announced a detective competition to solve the three tycoons’ apparent suicides, and Wenren Sheng raised the reward to one ton of gold.
• More than a hundred detectives arrived at the remote villa, but only ten passed the middle-aged man’s test.
• The detectives examined the library where the first tycoon had been found crushed beneath books and questioned the librarian and the tycoons’ three legitimate children.
• Wenren Sheng realized the victim had been killed before the librarian’s final patrol and hidden inside a stack of books arranged like a bookshelf.
• Wenren Sheng suspected that someone later knocked the makeshift bookshelf down, making the body’s sudden appearance seem to prove the locked-room suicide story.

The old-lady detective explained how the first murder used a timed trick to create a locked-room illusion, and the fat detective was later found dead in the library. The detectives discovered his notebook, which revealed he had identified the killer and gone to meet someone for a gold negotiation, but the story left his killer unknown.

• The old-lady detective explained that Tycoon No. 1 had been killed earlier and the body revealed later, creating a false locked-room mystery.
• Wenren Sheng noticed the suspects seemed uneasy and saw that the fat detective was watching one of the sons as if he already suspected him.
• The fat detective investigated alone, and his body was found in the library the next morning, strangled and covered with old books.
• The detectives considered how the killer had entered the library and suspected the fat detective had uncovered a secret before his death.
• The detectives found the fat detective's notebook, which said he knew who the killer was but lacked evidence and had gone to the library to demand 700 kilograms of gold.

Wenren Sheng and the detectives followed clues in the Detective Handbook to a warehouse, where they found evidence connected to fishing enthusiasts, while the heirs tried to pay the investigators to stop. Three detectives accepted the gold and withdrew, but three days later they were found murdered in a locked library room.

• The Old Woman Detective found a poem in the Detective Handbook, and Wenren Sheng realized the tall detective had also deciphered its riddle.
• Middle-aged Man used his dog to retrace Fat Detective’s route, leading the detectives to a warehouse containing fishing gear and bloodstained gloves.
• The detectives learned that the warehouse could be opened with a key, passcode, or fingerprint, leaving access open to anyone present.
• The three heirs offered each detective ten kilograms of gold to declare the two deaths suicides, and three detectives accepted and withdrew.
• Three days later, the three detectives who took the gold were found stabbed in the back in a locked library room.

The Youth detective traced the murders to Butler Zhao Shan, whose motive appeared linked to a deadly hit-and-run the wealthy men committed years earlier. Zhao Shan let the Youth leave after catching him searching his room, then revealed his plan was nearly complete and that he expected to reunite with his family.

• The Youth detective persuaded the group to investigate the other wealthy men’s death scenes, and Wenren Sheng realized the Youth had likely identified Butler Zhao Shan as the killer.
• At the river where the second wealthy man had died, the Youth searched for clues while Wenren Sheng watched him cautiously.
• The Youth found an old newspaper in Zhao Shan’s room reporting that three young men had killed two pedestrians in a motorcycle street race, and he concluded that the wealthy men’s crime had motivated the murders.
• Zhao Shan caught the Youth in his bedroom, questioned him calmly, and allowed him to leave without attacking him.
• After the Youth left, Zhao Shan looked at a family photograph and said only three more people remained before he and his family could be together again.

After realizing the Void World had stagnated, Wenren Sheng resolved to make worlds more interesting so they could survive. He returned to the Fragment Small World and began transforming the Urban Detective World by naming and redesigning its protagonists.

• The butler confessed to murdering the people he blamed for his child's death, then died from cyanide poisoning as the detectives reacted.
• Wenren Sheng recognized that the world had come to a standstill and concluded that he needed to investigate mysteries and make worlds more interesting.
• Back in the Fragment Small World, Wenren Sheng decided to transform the Urban Detective World to help it survive.
• Wenren Sheng used the Book of Creation to name the youth detective Jiang Chuan, the girl Mao Lan, and her father Mao Wu, while revising their character traits.
• Little Illusion appeared and asked to help design characters, and Wenren Sheng accepted her enthusiasm.

Mao Wu, Mao Lan, and Jiang Chuan traveled to a desert oasis for a 5 million commission involving a buried kingdom’s treasure. After hearing that the treasure’s location was hidden in the Taihe Ode inscription, Jiang Chuan guessed that the client had made a mistake in his calculations.

• Mao Wu accepted a 5 million commission and set off with Mao Lan and Jiang Chuan, while revealing that he had borrowed 300 million against the house for his wife’s factory.
• The three arrived at an oasis villa in the desert and learned that the owner enjoyed living under the threat of the oasis disappearing.
• The female butler explained that the oasis was connected to a powerful kingdom’s treasure, said to contain more than one hundred tons of gold.
• The female butler showed them the Taihe Ode inscription and said that deciphering it would reveal the treasure’s location.
• Jiang Chuan studied the inscription and suspected that the rich client had calculated something incorrectly.

Jiang Chuan investigated the villa and deduced that the frail Old Man was an impostor who had killed the original owner over a supposed hundred-ton gold treasure. He found clues identifying the killer as A and located the original owner’s burial place beneath the female butler’s garden.

• The group reached the villa, where the beautiful female butler explained the damage to its walls and showed them its golden mannequins.
• The Old Man asked Mao Wu to find the hundred-ton gold treasure, and Mao Wu discussed the inscription while Jiang Chuan realized it held a hidden meaning.
• Jiang Chuan recognized that the Old Man was a young man in disguise and suspected the group would be killed if they found the gold.
• With the Old Man’s permission, Jiang Chuan searched the villa and inferred from the disabled-person tableware that the Old Man was not the villa’s original owner.
• Jiang Chuan found diary entries saying A believed the original owner’s family had a hundred tons of gold and concluded that A had killed him and taken his place.
• Jiang Chuan read the female butler’s diary and deduced that the original owner was buried beneath the garden of her room.